This image shows only the swells directed at Ilbaritz - Bora Bora that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical December and is based upon 2953 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.

The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 30% of the time, equivalent to 9 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal December but 8% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 8%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Ilbaritz - Bora Bora is exposed to open water swells, we think that that clean surf can be found at Ilbaritz - Bora Bora about 30% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 59% of the time. This is means that we expect 27 days with waves in a typical December, of which 9 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.